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Housing association boss appointed as first director of consumer regulation at RSH

The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has appointed a housing association chief executive to be its first ever director of consumer regulation.

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Kate Dodsworth has been appointed as the new director of consumer regulation at the RSH
Kate Dodsworth has been appointed as the new director of consumer regulation at the RSH
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The chief executive of Gateway Housing has been appointed as the first ever director of consumer regulation at @RSHEngland #UKhousing

Kate Dodsworth, chief executive of Gateway Housing, will take up the new role in the summer.

The position has been created as part of the RSH’s response to the Social Housing White Paper, which proposed an overhaul of consumer regulation.

Ms Dodsworth’s appointment comes after research by Inside Housing found that Gateway had received the most criticism from the Housing Ombudsman of any social landlord with more than 1,000 homes in England relative to its size over the past three financial years.

Gateway said at the time that it had seen an over 50% reduction in the amount and type of enquiries and complaints to the ombudsman in the 2019/20 financial year.

The 2,900-home east London landlord’s Housing Ombudsman performance report shows it complied with 85.7% of orders within six months in 2019/20, compared with the housing association average of 98.8%.

Ms Dodsworth was appointed as chief executive of Gateway in 2017, following on from her role as director of people and strategy at Optivo.

She started her housing career working in homelessness and has also previously spent time at the National Housing Federation.


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Ms Dodsworth was also one of the founding members of Leadership 2025, which was set up to address diversity gaps in housing leadership, and is a trustee of the charity that is taking this work forward.

The Social Housing White Paper, which is part of the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire, will see the regulator introduce a new inspections programme that will assess landlords on consumer matters, in addition to current scrutiny of financial and governance matters.

Fiona MacGregor, chief executive of the RSH, said: “Kate brings with her strong experience of working with tenants and effectively listening to the tenant voice to shape and influence services in her various roles as well as deep knowledge of the social housing sector.

“We are delighted she will be joining us as director of consumer regulation, which is an extremely important role in our implementation of the white paper and the proactive consumer regulation regime that sets out.”

Ms Dodsworth said: “I’m honoured to take on this new role within the Regulator of Social Housing.

“Proactive consumer regulation will support a culture change which puts tenants at the centre of social housing.

“Having advocated this throughout my career, I’m really excited to join RSH at this time and lead the delivery of some of the white paper aspirations.”

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